


An Independent Reality

by The_Klein_Invariant



Category: Historical RPF
Genre: F/M, History, M/M, Math, Multi, don't complain that i didn't warn you, look Minkowski dies of appendicitis at age 44, noncanonical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-28
Updated: 2017-06-26
Packaged: 2018-11-19 04:08:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11305374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/The_Klein_Invariant/pseuds/The_Klein_Invariant
Summary: "Our science, which we loved above all else, brought us together; it seemed to us a garden full of flowers. In it, we enjoyed looking for hidden pathways and discovered many a new perspective that appealed to our sense of beauty, and when one of us showed it to the other and we marveled over it together, our joy was complete."With finding these words (and so many others) among the writings of these two, I became inspired to fix the fact that no one seems to have written any anachronistic fanfiction about their beautiful relationship NOT being platonic. Enjoy.





	An Independent Reality

The planet was predicted to be much too close to the sun to be observed without an eclipse.

It didn't matter much to young Hermann Minkowski as he gazed up at the sunset about his house, straining to see if he could recognize Vulcan. Maybe if he found Mr. La Verrier's missing planet, he woud become famous and loved, his parents would not be killed, and they could stay here. They could stay home.

But no matter how much he strained and glared, he could not see the tiny body. Instead, he resigned himself to trudging back inside to finish packing. He felt as though the ground was steeply warped away from this place, dragging him with it no matter how fast he ran. He wanted nothing more than live, but why did no one want them to stay? His father was a good merchant for the town and had helped them to build a very large (and, in his opinion, very boring) synagogue. He was only eight, but it didn't seem fair.

His mother was calling him into another room, probably to pick up his things. He wished suddenly that if he was forced to leave, she might change little in their new house. He felt as if he would miss every pebble in her garden as though it were his own finger. He would miss the view outside the window he shared with his siblings (whether he wanted to or not). He would miss everything about this place, and, to his young mind, it felt like dying alive.

But his parents insisted that a move was the only way they could stay safe, so he cried as little as possible before answering his mother’s call. She had not cancelled the move. “ _Dirast_ , I want you to know—you’ll be going to a new school now. You’ll have the chance to learn so much more than I can teach you and make new friends. But we’ll have to practice before you go. I don’t want you to feel behind.”

The twist he felt in stomach was not, in fact, the ground giving way. He nodded stiffly and shuffled off to gather his thoughts.

* * *

 

David Hilbert was feeling only slightly better. He wanted so much to study the patterns, the mathematics around him. But his school wanted him to _memorize_ Latin and Greek _poetry_. Why should he memorize what he could read?

Why should a gymnasium be considered the best in the city if it focused on the long dead words of dusty scholars over the new, breathing sciences? He’d heard that the children across the street had gone to a school where they could learn as much mathematics as they wanted, and one even challenged his teachers for skill.

He hardly got bad grades, but it still seemed unfair to be limited. His parents insisted that this school would be good for him, but he pushed through only to get to university. Once there, no one could stop him from studying whatever he wanted.

But, for now, that meant studying Ovid’s _Metamorphoses_ , Plato’s _Dialogues_ , and whatever else his gymnasium saw fit to push on him. He sighed dramatically before resuming his memorizations. He wished these theorems could just be derived from each other.


End file.
